European Council

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, as I have said, and as we have said repeatedly, we want Britain to have the greatest possible tariff-free and barrier-free trade with our European neighbours, and to be able to negotiate our own trade agreements.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I greatly welcome the west Balkans summit. The region is in a parlous state, as many of us predicted it would be without stronger action from the EU. There has been a Russian-promoted, if not Russian-backed, coup in Montenegro; Macedonia is close to civil war; Serbia goes backwards; Croatia threatens to do the same; and Bosnia continues to unravel. However, the summit will follow the trail of many others that have achieved nothing unless the end product is a united EU and US policy that is clear, strong and muscular and which will be driven towards a regional policy for the entire area. Absent that, I fear that the Balkans will continue to go backwards, and we all know what that means for Europe.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I agree with the concerns of the noble Lord. We will certainly be engaging closely with our partners. The summit next year that I mentioned will be focused on tackling serious and organised crime, anti-corruption and cybersecurity, and will include Prime Ministers and Foreign and Economic Ministers from the west Balkans and key partners such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria and the EU institutions. We are also providing a range of support to the region, including more law enforcement resources to tackle organised crime groups with links to the western Balkans, additional embassy staff, UK-led capacity building to build resilience to serious and organised crime in the region, and strategic communications expertise to the EU institutions to counter disinformation campaigns in the region. It is an issue that we take extremely seriously and that the Prime Minister led on in this Council meeting.

Industrial Strategy

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mobarik]

I agree with my noble friend.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that, following the more than 250 job losses in Yeovil, I recently wrote to the Secretary of State asking whether the preservation of Britain’s only stand-alone production capacity for helicopters in Yeovil would be part of a national strategy. He has not yet replied. Can she tell me whether it will be or not?

[Baroness Mobarik]

I cannot give any specifics on that, other than to repeat that we are looking at all our sectors and at the whole industrial strategy. We are looking at various methods of improving how we do things to build an economy that works for everyone the length and breadth of the country.

Jo Cox MP

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, Jo Cox erupted—there is no other way to describe it—into the inbox of my email account about six months ago. The voice was demanding not to be ignored and, as I soon discovered, not to be resisted either. She demanded that I work with her to help identify the cause of the starving in the besieged cities of Syria. I met with her, and how on earth could I conceivably resist? I was very privileged to work with her for some months to try to bring the issue to public attention. I have to say that she did the work rather than me and she could write extremely well. Due to her energy and commitment, I think we began to move the public debate.

The last email I had from her arrived on 28 May, three weeks ago. In typical Jo fashion she wrote saying, “Paddy, sorry to disturb your bank holiday weekend. I hope you are getting something of a break. Please will you sign the attached statement?”. So, of course I did and I wrote back to her saying, “You are wonderful, Jo. Thanks. Yes, that is fine. I am so involved in the referendum that I have little time for anything else. Fortunately, we and the starving in Syria have you”. But we do not any longer, and that cause is hugely diminished. In characteristic Jo style she wrote back to me saying, “Thank you, Paddy. Keep up the good work. Jo. X”. What else would you expect from her?

The last time I met her, we talked a little about the starving in Syrian cities and about how we could make politics more sensible and deliver on her passion expressed in her maiden speech to celebrate diversity. I quoted a poem which I have by heart from Rabindranath Tagore. She insisted that I send it to her because she was deeply moved by it. I have to confess that I forgot, so I shall quote it now. It sums up the value of a life, as others have said, cut tragically too short but nevertheless lived extraordinarily well. The poem goes like this:

We are all the more one, because we are many,

for we have left an ample space for love in the gap where we were sundered.

Our unlikeness shines with the radiance of a common creation,

like mountain peaks in the morning sun.

Those were the values for which Jo lived her life and they are the values for which perhaps she may have died. If we are able to do our best to live to those values, our politics will be better, our nation more successful and our civilisation, I believe, far more secure.

European Council: March 2016

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Yes, my Lords, we will of course take refugees from Turkey. Some of the refugees we have already received as a consequence of the Syrian crisis will be based in Turkey because they will be in some of the camps which are outside Syria on the border with Turkey. I can certainly reassure the noble Lord on that.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, following the events of the weekend, I wonder whether the Leader of the House can imagine with what delicious schadenfreude we on these Benches recall Mr Osborne’s comment in the Budget that he had abolished the Liberal Democrats. I bet he is missing us now for we could be relied on in government whereas it is perfectly clear that his shambles of a party cannot.

Turning to refugees, the Government’s case for refusing to assist a single refugee currently fleeing from the Syrian battlefield has been that to do so would encourage more to come. Since by the Government’s own admission the Turkish scheme overcomes that problem, will we play any part in it and, if not, what dishonourable fig leaf of an excuse will they now raise in order not to assist a single refugee coming now from the Syrian battlefield?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I completely reject the way the noble Lord has described what we have done and what we are committed to do. We are supporting refugees from Syria in two very clear ways: first, by providing financial support and aid to those who are based in these camps at a rate unmatched by any country in Europe and second only to the United States. Our resettlement programme, which we put in place last year, has already started to deliver refuge to people who were in camps near Syria to a greater degree than that of those countries in Europe which were party to the relocation scheme. It is working.

If children who have fled from Syria and are in mainland Europe and have claimed asylum have family ties to the United Kingdom, our policy is to assist them in being reunited with their family, but they have to claim asylum in the country they are in. That is the policy, but it also reflects how much support we want to give.

As to the noble Lord’s comments on the Liberal Democrats, the Budget did a huge amount to ensure that we are supporting future generations of this country. We have increased funding for our schools, we have taken yet more low-paid people out of tax, we have frozen fuel duty to help hard-working people and we are helping the poorest to save. We have done all that on our own in government, and we will continue to do that and to deliver our long-term economic plan because that is what people voted for, that is what they want from us and that is what will secure their future and that of everybody in this country.

Syria: UK Military Action

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to welcome and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hague, on his speech. He was a doughty friend and supporter of all that we tried to do in Bosnia, and I thank him for that. He and his colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, made a very significant contribution there.

I hope that today marks a watershed not just for the people of Syria but in our battle to remove the scourge and terror of ISIL and in the foreign policy of Her Majesty’s Government. In the last 10 years, since shock and awe, we have been obsessed by high explosives as our singular instrument of foreign policy. We have forgotten again and again and again the old dictum of Clausewitz that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. So in Afghanistan we relied on high explosives: we did not build the relationships with the neighbours that we should have built, we did not build that diplomatic context, and we lost. In Iraq, we did the same. And we lost. In Libya, when it came to constructing the peace, we did the same. And we lost. And for the last three years we have been doing exactly the same. And we were losing. Maybe we will now give ourselves a chance to turn that around and make success.

The more alert Members of your Lordships’ House will recall that I have made the point over the last three years, in this place and in newspaper articles, that bombing alone would not succeed and that we ignored the diplomatic context—there was none. I remember saying, time and again, that to make the removal of Assad a cardinal principle of our policy when we did not have the means to make it happen was utter folly. If you will the ends, you must will the means, and we had none, since he was supported by Russia and Iran. I made the point, time and again, that this was not about the West but about the growing Sunni-Shia conflict, and we had to try and get in and unite those two groups; that we needed to create a proper coalition; that we needed to involve the Russians—I remember the rather derisory comments when I first made that proposition.

Now, we have that. At last, in Vienna, we have a proposition for a widening coalition between Sunni and Shia with the involvement of the Russians. To back that, we have a UN Security Council resolution, which, by the way, does not just legitimise action but lays a duty upon us to take action. That is what the words say. So all the ingredients that I sought to make some sense of military action are now either in place or in progress. How could I not back that?

However, I want to make two points very clear. The first is that British bombing alone will not defeat ISIL. It might add something—a rather small amount, I think—to the weight of bombs that are falling, but it is the coalition being constructed in Vienna today that will first of all defeat ISIL and then move on to create, I hope, some kind of stable peace in Syria. By the way, those who want to get rid of Assad need to recognise that it is only in the context of that coalition that Assad will now be removed. So of course one would want to support that. With a coalition that comes up with a military strategy first—as in Dayton, when we had to bomb the war to an end to beat the Serbs—and then a strategy to create some kind of stability in Syria, how could it be the case that Britain would not play a part in that? So, yes, I support the Government.

Secondly, and finally, if you launch war, you launch unpredictability. The best that we are deciding on today is that, on the balance of probabilities, this is the best opportunity that we will have. There are no certainties. If we are successful in removing ISIL and creating some context of stability in Syria, it will be messy, conflict-ridden and inelegant. The peace that we may be able to create will not look very nice. In fact, probably the only thing to be said for that peace is that it will be better than the war that it ended.

I remember so well when the citizens of Sarajevo had to suffer four years of conflict. The Dayton peace agreement left a mess, but there was not one of them who did not say that that mess was better than the war that preceded it. I bet that there is not one person—

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, we have been very clear that we really need to stick to time. I would be grateful for the next speaker.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I will draw my remarks to a close. There is not one citizen—

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am sorry, my Lords, but could we move on to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins?

Syria: Foreign Affairs Committee Report

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As I made clear in the Statement, this is about ISIL first. Militarily, we propose to take action in Syria alongside the action already being taken in Iraq because we cannot stop at a border that our enemy does not recognise. At the same time, we must also achieve a political settlement in Syria that will provide for stable government in future and in which al-Assad will not be able to play a part, because he will not provide the stability that is the long-term solution for eradicating ISIL.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Leader for what is, I am sure the House will recognise, by any standards a very substantive Statement, and particularly for her understanding that it will take a little time for us to digest and study this. I am grateful for both those things. The new element here is the UN Security Council resolution, which seems, as my noble and learned friend said, to provide a pretty clear case for legality. Secondly, there is the diplomatic track at last being followed—not before time, some might imagine.

May I test the Leader a little on the ambitions of the Vienna talks by drawing a parallel? The Dayton agreement that stopped what was a terrible sectarian war was an international treaty drawn up to include neighbours across the religious divide and underpinned by the great powers in guarantor fashion. It provided a framework for military action and for the peace that followed. Is that the model the Government have in mind for Vienna? If it is, then I strongly support that.

The Dayton agreement produced a very messy outcome, and whatever outcome, whatever peace we achieve in Syria—God help us, I hope we do—will be even messier. This will not be a comfortable peace; it will be a fractured peace and the very best we will be able to say of it is that, fractured, uncertain and unsatisfying as it is, it is better than continuing this terrible war. If that is the case, that is good enough for me.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I can tell him and other noble Lords that there are clearly differences between some of those involved in the Vienna talks—I mentioned that Russia is involved and there are some differences between us—but on 14 November they agreed a timeframe for political negotiations to begin by the end of the year, for a transitional government to be in place within six months and for a new constitution and free and fair elections within 18 months. The key thing everybody is signed up to is that a Government in Syria—like a Government in Iraq or, indeed, anywhere—must govern for all the people and provide the stability that is necessary for all those who live there.

G20 and the Paris Attacks

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The United Kingdom has been ensuring that we support the moderate forces which oppose Assad in their efforts to fight him and ISIL. They have regained some important territory and are making some progress. We need to encourage them to go further and that is where we are focusing our efforts.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, remembering the baleful effect that ensued when George Bush Jr used the word “crusade” in the context of the second Gulf War, does the Minister agree that the language we choose at this moment is extremely important? In this context, does she agree that use of the word “war” is, at best, unhelpful and perhaps even unwise, given that it will only reinforce the Manichean view of the terrorists? Does that also apply to the Prime Minister’s favourite phrase, which is that we are fighting for “western values”, when we are, in fact, fighting for the universal values that underpin all the great religions and philosophies, including Islam?

UK Territorial Space: Spanish Incursions

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches.

[The Earl of Courtown]

I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord said concerning our naval assets in Gibraltar. I will ensure that that is drawn to the attention of the department.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, since we are discussing preventing people from straying on to territory where they should not be, can anything be done to stop senior serving military officers appearing on television?

[The Earl of Courtown]

No.

Syria: Refugees and Counterterrorism

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord has covered a lot of ground in that contribution. Briefly, I would say that he is, of course, right that there has to be a political solution to the crisis in Syria. We agree that that requires the involvement of many, many actors in that region and other powerful regions around the world. I do not agree with his assessment of Assad. As he may recall from my responses to questions on previous Statements before the Recess, the UK is in dialogue with the Russians in order for them to use what influence they have over Assad, but we are very clear that the way in which we progress will not be one in which we are willing to work with Assad.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister realises what a discreditable attempt at press management it is to bring these two Statements together to us this afternoon. On the question of refugees, may I ask her to confirm what I think she said a moment ago—that any child or orphan brought in under this scheme will, as is the case under present legislation, be deported at the age of 18? That is what she seemed to say. Is that correct? And can she please explain the logic whereby the Government say that they will help refugees who are already housed and secure, and already being fed, in refugee camps outside Europe, but will do nothing for refugees who are desperate, and in some cases dying, for want of those things inside Europe? Is the difficult thing, which the Government cannot say, the words “inside Europe”?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am not going to dignify the noble Lord’s comments about press management with a response. In response to the specific questions he asked, the point I was trying to make about the way in which we will support refugees who come to us who are children is that there is a clear legal framework that applies when people arrive here as refugees, which includes, after so many years, people being entitled to residency in the United Kingdom. I am not suggesting that there is a new set of rules, or a change to existing rules, because of this expanded refugee programme at this time. As for those seeking refuge who have already arrived in Europe, I agree with the noble Lord that we have seen harrowing evidence of suffering not just over the last few days but over the last few weeks, but we are very clear in our mind as a Government that the best policy is the one that we are pursuing: to support people in Syria and to offer refuge to those in the camps in the countries on the borders of Syria, in order to prevent more people risking their lives by crossing the Mediterranean to seek refuge. We really believe that that is the right way forward.

Gaza Strip: Rafah Crossing

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Baroness refers to the Cairo pledges. The United Kingdom has honoured 80% of its pledges and has 20% outstanding. That will be spent over the next financial year and will concentrate on job creation, getting people into work, which we all know will help their economy. As for the other countries and their pledges, pressure is being put on them to spend more money in that area.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, we have just had a spokesman from the Labour Benches ask a question, so if we are taking turns, it would normally be the turn of the Lib Dem Benches.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I am most grateful. I think I heard the Minister say that “perhaps” war crimes have been committed. We cannot leave it as “perhaps” war crimes have been committed. Either they have or they have not, and surely Her Majesty’s Government and others should now be taking steps to ensure that they understand whether or not that is the case.

[The Earl of Courtown]

At the particular point when answering that question, I could not find the notes in my folder. As I understand it, war crimes have been committed.